Nintendo Region Lock Petition Gains Over 14,000 Signatures

Nintendo fans, almost more than anyone, will know the pain of missing out on great games because they weren’t released in their territory. Classics such as Mother 3 and Captain Rainbow have been locked forever within Japan, and it took incredibly long to get Xenoblade, The Last Story andPandora’s Tower in the States.

Now, a fan petition over on Change.org has launched asking Nintendo to make the Wii U, 3DS and Wii region-free. Already it has gathered a whopping 12,000 signatures. It notes that after Microsoft’s recent removal of Xbox One’s DRM and region lock, Nintendo will now be the only company with region-locked systems.

It reads:

“Nintendo is now left as the only major console manufacturer that maintains a region-locking policy. This practice is restrictive to customers, including those who enjoy playing foreign games not available domestically, speak foreign languages, serve in the military, or otherwise travel or live abroad.

“If anything, region-free policies encourage the additional sales of legitimate software that cannot otherwise be obtained in a given country; the money would still go to Nintendo, the developers and the distributors behind each game.”

“Nintendo has been amazing in its attempts to shorten the gap in release dates between different territories (e.g. the worldwide launch of Pokémon X and Y this October) and we are truly grateful for that. But we don’t want region-free consoles just so we can purchase and play some games earlier than usual. We want region-free consoles so that we may exercise our consumer rights to choose what games we play and to thus expand our horizons.”

The petition requests that Nintendo remove region-locking for their systems via system updates.

It may be getting a lot of attention already, but it could always use some more, right? If you feel that your systems should be region-free, head on over and sign the petition here.